


Itch

by faeryroses



Category: The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Domestic Violence, Gen, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Insanity, Inspired by Fanfiction, One Shot, Original Character(s), Paranoia, Parent-Child Relationship, Stephen is 4, The Flare, exploration of mental deterioration, in POV of his mother, the depictions of violence actually arent THAT graphic right??, unnamed character - Freeform, when his name was still stephen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:20:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23240854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faeryroses/pseuds/faeryroses
Summary: Stephen's father succumbed first.His mother feels it coming, and she has to give him up. The itch to surrender to the Flare is too strong, and she wishes her love for her son could be enough to protect him from her.It isn't.[INSPIRED BY:The Love CurebyThomaddicted]
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	Itch

**Author's Note:**

> It feels weird to be writing/posting this rn with all the coronavirus shit but..! Here we are. This is just a first draft, pretty rough, and therefore Not Great. i apologize.

Her son stands at the opposite end of the couch, and he tugs at her wool sock. “Mommy,” he says. “Is it bedtime?”

She rubs a hand across her face. “Honey, why don’t you just lay down here with me?”

He smiles wide, crawling up onto the couch. He giggles as he climbs over her body. “Do I get to sleep here tonight?”

Shrugging as best as she can while lying on her side, she pulls the boy close to her chest. “Maybe. If Daddy calms down.” He wriggles in her arms so that their noses are touching.

“Don’t be sad, Mommy.”

The complete innocence of her own child breaks her even further. She has to close her eyes to hold back an anguished scream.

“Oh, Stephen, I could never be sad around you.” She kisses his forehead and folds herself around him. She knows that her husband hadn’t meant to hurt her. But now she truly has no choice. His sickness is a danger to their son, and she will do anything to protect him. Even if that means sending her husband away to die alone.

Even if that meant that she, too, will eventually have to leave. She feels a tickle in the back of her throat. She has a week, maybe.

The next morning, the white-coated men come to take her husband away. As they pull him towards the open door, she nudges Stephen. “Say goodbye. Tell him you love him.” _He could use it right now._ Her eyes sit heavy and wet in her skull; all sense of clarity and reality left her husband’s eyes when she told him she called. Fortunately, Stephen hadn’t witnessed their tussle, in which she had to resort to nasty violence to restrain the beast.

“Tell him,” she repeats.

Surprisingly, the man is silent, watching his son. He tilts his head.

Stephen’s hand tightens around his mother’s thumb. “I love you, Daddy,” he finally says in a quiet tremble.

The fire bursts in his eyes again, and the man snarls, lunging forwards. Stephen whimpers, pressing close into her leg and hiding his face in her sweatpants. She rests a hand on his back and steps back. Tears dripping into her mouth, she nods at the whitecoats and they drag her husband away. They don’t close the door behind them.

She picks Stephen up and holds him tight as she hurries to close the door and escape to the living room. It’s so hard not to sob. But crying makes her throat ache even more. Her face stings, too, the salty tears seeping into the broken skin where her husband hit her. She holds her little boy close to her chest and tries to remember how to breathe evenly.

Stephen doesn’t understand what’s happening. That breaks her heart. He will never understand why she will have to give him up. She just hopes that someday he’ll understand, at least, that it’s not for the money, though there is a _lot_ of it being offered to her. She couldn’t live long enough to spend that money.

They promise a better life for him. Fulfilling, and stimulating. And safe. It’s her job to make sure he is safe. And as long as he’s with her, he’s not safe.

When she can speak again without new tears breaking free, she speaks into the spiral of hair on his scalp. “Stephen, honey, do you want to go to school?”

He perks up. “Will other kids be there?”

“Yes, there will be other kids. And you can make friends.” She pulls back to smile hopefully at him.

“Yeah! Yeah, I want to go!”

Some weight is lifted from her shoulders. She thinks about telling him that she can’t go with him, but that will only hurt him, and he won’t understand why. It’s stressful, having to act so cheerful when the world is descending into chaos. But she has to keep up, for him. 

“I love you, Stephen.”

“Love you, too, Mommy.”

The rest of the day is blank and blurred. She only remembers the itch in her throat.

She wakes the next morning with a pounding headache. Stephen brings her water, only spilling a little bit in the hallway, he says. “Thank you, Stephen. I love you.

“I love you, Mommy.” He hasn’t asked about his dad yet. She’s fine with that.

The next day, she still doesn’t want to get out of bed. The grief and guilt of sending her husband away has gotten to her. She feels his malevolent presence in the room. In the corner intersecting the closet door. She wants to weep, but Stephen will get worried. Stephen comes in to say goodnight. “Goodnight, baby, I love you.”

“Goodnight, I love you! Sweet dreams, Mommy.” He bounds out of the room again, and she decides to call that organization that keeps pestering her about him. They agree to pick him up in five days. He’s third on the list. She hangs up, eyes aching, swollen, tired from crying.

Sunlight fills the room the next morning. She had slept late, but she feels great. She walks into the living room and discovers Stephen has been watching TV for the past few hours — and she doesn’t get upset. She just smiles. Ensuring Stephen’s safety has lifted her spirits. She falls onto the sofa and gives him a suffocating hug. “Oh, Stephen, I love you! You’re the best boy in the world!”

“You’re the best Mommy in the whole world!” he giggles, wrapping his soft arms around her neck. But two hours later, she loses her temper when he drops his fork, splattering pasta sauce on the carpet. After she screams, her headache returns and persists for the rest of the day. But screaming temporarily rids her throat of that itch. The thought makes her uneasy.

Her eyes are bloodshot the next morning. She didn’t sleep well. She had worried about this organization that was going to take Stephen. What if they never came to pick him up, or what if they arrived a day late? Who knows what would happen in a day? She knows how fast she is deteriorating. That day could mean the difference between being a mother and being a murderer.

If she lost control and hurt him, she’d never be able to live with herself.

She weeps in front of the mirror, further contorting her bruised face, at how much love she has for her son, and how she can’t do absolutely everything for him.

She doesn’t remember anything from the day after that. But she remembers when she finally lost control, the day after.

She had baked a cake for desert, to celebrate Stephen going to school the next day. When he finishes his first slice and takes his dishes to the sink, he stays at her side as she soaps up the sponge. He hops a couple times, saying, “That was so yummy! Thanks, Mommy.”

“Of course,” she smiles. Or grimaces. She still has a killer headache, and she’s feeling especially irritable.

“I love you so much.” He smiles, waiting for her to say it back. It’s become a game for him.

But instead of her heart swelling with the immense love she has for him, her jaw tightens. She gets angry. She’s angry that she can’t stay, that she can’t live, that she can’t keep providing for and loving her son, who loves her _so much_. She’s angry that she had to get sick, and he has to be immune. He has to keep living without his parents, watching everyone around him descend into madness and he can do nothing, for he doesn’t know anything. She’s angry that despite everything going on in the world, her son stays so pure, untouched by this fucking virus.

But the virus still affects him. And it’s because of her. It is her fault; she lets the virus taint him.

So she gets angry. She’s so blinded by this anger that she can’t express all this agonizing love, agonizing sense of failure, agonizing anger at the state of the world.

So she screams. “Shut up, Stephen! You don’t love me!” She slams the water off, whirling around to face him. She looks down at him, her face contorting into a horrid sneer. “You don’t know anything!”

The look of sudden terror on his face makes her even angrier, mostly at herself. She clenches her fists, and looks at the boy. He looks so much like his father. His father, who had to get sick first and leave her in charge of all this. She was never ready for this. She was never prepared for that look on Stephen’s face.

“Stop looking at me like that!” That should have made him run away. He doesn’t run away. “Why are you still here? Go! Get _away_ from me!” Her voice cracks as her scream hits a different pitch. She screams, wordlessly, and grabs something from the counter. “ _GO!_ ” She throws the thing at him — one brief moment of clarity, and she’s relieved that she missed.

She hates herself so much for turning into this. “Go away!” she screams again, eyes red with rage and tears. If he wasn’t there, it’d be so much easier. “I wish you didn’t exist!” If he wasn’t there, dying would be so much easier. She could do it alone. There wouldn’t be any witnesses.

Finally, _finally_ , Stephen takes off running. She doesn’t watch where he goes. Screaming again, she slams her hands down onto the kitchen counter. The jolting pain snaps her out of her rage. She blinks. Her palms sting. She looks at where her son had been cowering and sees that she had thrown a salt shaker. The glass didn’t break, but the cap fell off, spilling salt all over the linoleum and the carpet past it. Doesn’t that mean bad luck? Unless she tosses some over her shoulder?

Whatever. It doesn’t matter. She’s fucked everything up already.

She waits a few minutes, as long as she can bear it, before going to find Stephen. He had locked himself in his room. “Stephen, honey,” she whispers to the closed door, her voice broken. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I love you. I didn’t mean any of that. I’m sorry I threw things at you. Please, Stephen, please, I know I was bad. I’m sorry.” She falls to her knees, begging to a blank wall for forgiveness.

“Mommy, you scared me.” His voice comes back muffled through the door.

She squeezes her eyes shut, letting her head fall forwards. Pressing her hands flat to the cool wood doesn't ease the ache. “I know. I know that, and I am so, so, sorry. You don’t have to come out. Just… pack your things for school, okay? I’m sorry. I love you.”

Her throat aches. For another moment she sits at the door, waiting for some response. But he doesn’t say it back. The sound of a zipper means he’s moved past it. She bites back a sob. She's ruined everything.

Nothing happens the rest of the night. She lies in bed, staring at the ceiling and the odd shapes that her eyes create to entertain her. Now, the only thing that can save her — save Stephen — is that stupid organization. Hopefully they arrive on time tomorrow. She fears if she has to spend another day with her son, one of them won’t make it to nighttime still breathing.

And the whitecoats do arrive on time. If it hadn't been for all the shit happening around the world, all the people dying, she would thank a god.

Stephen hesitantly gives her a hug, and she kisses the top of his head, on the spiral of soft, brown hair. He smells so sweet and warm, like a child should. One of the whitecoats, a kind-eyed woman, takes Stephen by the hand and leads him outside. The sleek, black car doesn’t kick up dust as it drives away slowly. Even after Stephen has been gone for ten minutes, she still stands at the window, eyes stuck on the driveway.

Silence rings around the house. Her husband’s presence is back. He hangs over her shoulder. She turns to look him in the eye. He snarls, and she frowns back.

She looks out the window again. “I love you, Stephen.”

There is no response.

**Author's Note:**

> (im painfully aware of the passive voice i overuse, and the boring sentence structures. i promise i could be better if i wrote a second draft.)
> 
> anyway! i am still writing like 8-9 other fics lmao I'm getting around to finishing a couple of them. watch out tho! i'm abt to dip into something other than the maze runner! :0
> 
> i’d love to hear your thoughts! And if you have prompt ideas, feel free to leave them below or bully me to write more on my tumblr (link in profile)


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